The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

1. City planners in China want to combine the nine cities in the Pearl River Delta into a 42-million-person megacity that’s the size of Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire combined. [via Gawker]

2. Patti Smith is currently “about 68 percent done” writing a detective novel that opens in the churchyard of St Giles-in-the-Fields in London. [via NME]

3. Keanu Reeves says that he met with the Wachowskis and that they are working on a “script treatment” for a fourth and fifth Matrix movie that would feature him as Neo. [via Kottke]

4. According to TVline’s Michael Ausiello, McG — who helmed the Charlie’s Angels movies and is an executive producer on Nikita, Human Target, Supernatural, and Chuck — has emerged as the odds-on favorite to direct the pilot for NBC’s much-hyped Wonder Woman remake.

5. While their reps aren’t confirming anything yet, there are reports that Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem are celebrating the birth of their first child, a baby boy. [via NYP]